Abstract
Although threats against journalists are commonly understood as discrete acts of intimidation, their enduring role in restructuring everyday newswork remains under-theorized. This article introduces the concept of post-threat journalism to explain how intimidation persists as an ambient structuring condition that reorganizes journalistic practice long after the initial threat. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 12 journalists in Mindanao, the Philippines, the study shows that threats do not simply silence reporting but reshape how journalism is lived and sustained. Journalists adapt through collateral risk management involving family protection, continuous anticipatory vigilance, editorial self-governance, and economic improvisation. These adaptations enable journalism to continue, but in structurally altered forms governed by individualized survival strategies rather than institutional protection. Conceptually, the study advances existing frameworks by demonstrating that threat operates not only as an episodic disruption but as an enduring force that restructures journalism as labor, practice, and lived experience. Empirically, it reveals how press freedom gradually erodes not only through overt repression but through the normalization of vulnerability and anticipatory restraint embedded in routine newswork.
Introduction
Journalism is increasingly practiced under conditions of hostility, intimidation, and structural vulnerability. Across political contexts, journalists face harassment, surveillance, legal intimidation, physical attacks, and assassination as consequences of their reporting (UNESCO, 2022a; Waisbord, 2020). These threats occur not only in authoritarian regimes but also in formally democratic societies, where political actors, economic elites, and organized networks deploy intimidation to suppress scrutiny and shape public discourse (Lee and Chan, 2023; Slavtcheva-Petkova et al., 2023). Globally, dozens of journalists are killed each year, while thousands more endure non-lethal forms of intimidation, including online abuse, strategic lawsuits, and coordinated harassment campaigns (Committee to Protect Journalists [CPJ], 2023; UNESCO, 2022b). The persistence of impunity reinforces these patterns, signaling that attacks on journalists often carry few consequences and contributing to a broader climate in which threat becomes normalized rather than exceptional (UNESCO, 2021; Waisbord, 2020). These conditions reflect a broader transformation in which journalism increasingly operates within environments structured by risk, constraint, and vulnerability rather than institutional protection and professional autonomy.
Research has demonstrated that the consequences of threat extend far beyond the initial moment of intimidation. Exposure to violence, harassment, and surveillance produces lasting psychological distress, anxiety, and trauma, while also reshaping journalists’ risk perception, editorial judgment, and professional conduct (Feinstein et al., 2025; Hasan and Al-Zaman, 2026). Journalists working under hostile conditions adopt adaptive strategies to anticipate and manage danger, adjusting their routines, sources, and reporting practices in response to ongoing risk (Høiby, 2020; Kantola and Harju, 2023). These findings challenge event-centered understandings of threat by demonstrating that intimidation becomes embedded in everyday journalistic practice. As Slavtcheva-Petkova et al. (2023) argues, journalist safety cannot be understood solely as the absence of violence, but must be conceptualized as an ongoing condition shaped by the anticipation and management of harm. These dynamics are closely linked to broader structural transformations in journalism as precarious labor, where economic insecurity, limited institutional support, and weak safety infrastructures intensify journalists’ vulnerability to intimidation and constrain their professional autonomy (Bélair-Gagnon et al., 2024; Deuze and Witschge, 2020; Örnebring, 2018).
The Philippines exemplifies these patterns with particular intensity. Long regarded as one of the most dangerous countries for journalists, the Philippines has experienced persistent violence, harassment, and impunity targeting media workers (Reporters Without Borders, 2024a; Yi and Crispin, 2023). Since the restoration of democracy in 1986, more than 140 journalists have been killed, including the 2009 Maguindanao massacre, one of the deadliest attacks on journalists in modern history (Hedman, 2009; International Federation of Journalists, 2023). Although legal protections for press freedom formally exist, scholars emphasize that these protections remain unevenly realized in practice, particularly outside metropolitan centers where journalists operate under conditions of economic precarity, political patronage, and limited institutional support (Bello and Dagle, 2023; Waisbord, 2020). Political hostility has further intensified these risks. During the Duterte administration, journalists were subjected to legal harassment, public vilification, and red-tagging, practices that exposed them to surveillance, arrest, and violence while fostering climates of anticipatory fear (Neilson and Ortiga, 2023). These conditions demonstrate how intimidation operates not only through direct violence but also through sustained environments of threat that reshape journalistic practice.
These risks are especially pronounced in Mindanao, a region marked by armed conflict, entrenched political dynasties, and fragile media infrastructures (Høiby, 2020; Lumbang, 2009). Journalists in provincial contexts often face heightened vulnerability due to their proximity to political actors and their limited ability to disengage from local environments where threats originate. Unlike nationally prominent journalists who may access institutional protection or relocate, local journalists remain socially and spatially embedded in the communities they report on, intensifying their exposure to retaliation and constraining their professional autonomy (Høiby, 2020). Despite extensive documentation of violence and institutional responses, existing scholarship has primarily focused on threats as discrete incidents or on formal protection mechanisms (CPJ, 2023; UNESCO, 2022b). Less attention has been given to how journalists experience and navigate threat as an enduring condition shaping their everyday professional and personal lives. This study addresses this gap by examining how journalists in Mindanao experience and navigate persistent threats, foregrounding threats not as episodic disruptions but as structural conditions that reorganize the lived, material, and professional practices of journalism.
Literature review
Normalized threat and the everyday politics of journalist safety
Globally, journalism has become increasingly perilous as violence, harassment, and legal intimidation intensify. Between 2006 and 2020, more than 1200 journalists were killed, and in nearly 90% of cases, perpetrators faced no punishment, reinforcing a climate in which violence against journalists is normalized rather than treated as exceptional (Dunham, 2023; UNESCO, 2021). This culture of impunity sustains cycles of attack by signaling that targeting journalists carries little consequence. Threats have also expanded into digital spaces, where online harassment—particularly gendered abuse—has become pervasive, affecting 73% of women journalists and sometimes escalating into offline violence (UNESCO, 2021). The assassination of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia following sustained online hostility illustrates how digital and physical threats operate along a continuum, producing both lethal outcomes and broader chilling effects on press freedom.
Censorship increasingly operates through both legal and extralegal mechanisms. Governments deploy defamation laws, anti-terror legislation, and “fake news” statutes to impose financial, legal, and psychological burdens on journalists, transforming legal systems into instruments of repression rather than protection (Lee and Chan, 2023; UNESCO, 2021). High-profile prosecutions, including those against Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa in the Philippines, demonstrate how vexatious litigation deters investigative reporting and weakens watchdog journalism. Extralegal repression remains equally pervasive. In Mexico, one of the world’s deadliest countries for journalists, at least 163 reporters were killed between 2000 and 2022, often in contexts marked by organized crime and state tolerance or complicity (Alcocer and González, 2023). Beyond direct violence, digital surveillance, smear campaigns, and coordinated trolling further constrain journalists’ ability to operate independently (Ferrier et al., 2026).
These patterns are reinforced by hostile political rhetoric and systemic impunity. Political leaders increasingly frame journalists as “enemies,” “traitors,” or purveyors of disinformation, legitimizing hostility and amplifying risk (Egelhofer et al., 2022; Miro, 2024). Such rhetoric, combined with weak accountability, normalizes violence and erodes the institutional foundations of press freedom across both authoritarian regimes and democratic contexts (Lee and Chan, 2023; Reporters Without Borders, 2024b). As a result, threats against journalists are not isolated disruptions but structural features of contemporary media environments (UNESCO, 2022b; Waisbord, 2020).
Recent scholarship challenges narrow definitions of safety that reduce it to the mere absence of violence. Slavtcheva-Petkova et al. (2023) argues that safety must be understood as an ongoing awareness of risk that shapes journalistic practice. From this perspective, safety is experiential and anticipatory: journalists continuously interpret danger, adjust routines, and recalibrate editorial decisions in response to persistent uncertainty (Høiby, 2020; Kantola and Harju, 2023). This shifts attention from discrete attacks to the enduring conditions under which journalism is practiced. Even without direct violence, journalists operate within ambient threat environments that structure mobility, sourcing, language, and visibility. Safety, therefore, is not a fixed institutional guarantee but an unstable and negotiated condition embedded in the everyday labor of journalism.
Journalist welfare, structural vulnerability, and press freedom in Mindanao
Journalist welfare in the Philippines has long been framed through press freedom violations, yet emerging scholarship shows that threats are inseparable from the structural conditions that shape journalism as labor (Bélair-Gagnon et al., 2024). International watchdogs consistently rank the Philippines among the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists, citing killings, harassment, intimidation, and entrenched impunity (Reporters Without Borders, 2024b; Yi and Crispin, 2023). While constitutional protections formally exist, these guarantees remain unevenly realized, especially outside metropolitan centers where journalists operate with limited institutional protection and heightened exposure to local political actors (Bello and Dagle, 2023). This disparity reveals that press freedom cannot be understood solely as a legal entitlement, but as a materially uneven condition shaped by geography, institutional support, and political power.
A welfare-oriented perspective reframes press freedom as a labor condition embedded in economic and organizational precarity (Deuze and Witschge, 2020; Örnebring, 2018). Philippine journalists frequently work under insecure contracts, low pay, and minimal access to insurance, legal aid, or psychosocial support, limiting their ability to withstand threats and professional pressure (Valderama, 2010). Safety mechanisms remain unevenly distributed, with institutional protections concentrated in Metro Manila, while provincial journalists often bear risks individually (National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, 2020). These structural deficits normalize danger as part of professional identity, transforming survival from an institutional obligation into an individualized burden (Bélair-Gagnon et al., 2024; Deuze and Witschge, 2020; Høiby, 2020; Waisbord, 2020).
These vulnerabilities are intensified in Mindanao, where journalism operates within a historically conflict-affected and politically fragmented environment. Journalists face risks associated with militarization, insurgency, and entrenched political dynasties (Høiby, 2020; Lumbang, 2009). The 2009 Maguindanao massacre, in which 32 practitioners were killed, remains a defining case, demonstrating how political power, private armed groups, and weak law enforcement converge to endanger media workers (Hedman, 2009; International Federation of Journalists, 2023). Although convictions were eventually secured, delayed justice reinforced impunity and normalized anticipatory risk within journalistic practice (RSF, 2019). Provincial journalists face heightened exposure because they remain embedded within the communities they report on, increasing vulnerability to retaliation and forcing safety considerations into routine editorial decisions (Høiby, 2020).
Political repression and economic precarity further intensify these structural risks. Red-tagging under the Duterte administration exposed journalists to surveillance, harassment, and violence, creating anticipatory fear even without direct attack (Buso, 2024; Neilson and Ortiga, 2023). Economic insecurity compounds this vulnerability, as low wages and unstable employment force journalists to navigate patronage, multiple jobs, and compromised autonomy (Bello and Dagle, 2023; Valderama, 2010). In under-resourced regions like Mindanao, threats directly translate into livelihood insecurity, reinforcing structural vulnerability and undermining journalism’s democratic function (Høiby, 2020). Without addressing these material inequalities, press freedom in the Philippines remains formally proclaimed but structurally fragile.
Methods
The study is situated within a constructivist–interpretivist research paradigm, which understands journalistic experience as socially and subjectively constructed rather than as a fixed or objective reality. From this perspective, meaning emerges through participants’ lived experiences and interpretive processes as they navigate threats within specific professional, relational, and political contexts (Lincoln and Guba, 1985; Schwandt, 1994). Interpretivist inquiry emphasizes how individuals make sense of events through language, emotion, and interaction, privileging participants’ own accounts over the testing of universal laws or causal explanations (Creswell and Poth, 2023). This approach is well-suited to examining participants’ post-threat experiences within their socio-cultural environments.
Demographic profile of the participants.
Recruitment was conducted through professional networks and referrals. Potential participants were approached individually and provided with an information sheet outlining the study’s purpose, procedures, risks, and benefits. Those who agreed to participate signed a written consent form prior to their interviews. The College’s Research Ethics Office reviewed and approved all research procedures to ensure compliance with institutional and professional ethical standards for research involving human participants. To minimize risks, participants were reminded that they could withdraw at any point, and the researcher ensured that interviews could be paused or discontinued if participants showed distress.
Data collection consisted of face-to-face interviews conducted in safe and mutually agreed-upon locations. Each interview lasted between 45 and 60 minutes and was audio-recorded with permission. The interview guide, validated by a faculty panel, focused on forms of threats received, their impacts on personal and professional lives, coping mechanisms, and reflections on institutional or community support. Field notes were also taken to record contextual observations and nonverbal cues that added depth to the narratives.
Given the Philippines’ multilingual context, participants were encouraged to use the language in which they felt most comfortable. This resulted in a mix of English, Tagalog, and Bisaya during the interviews. Transcripts preserved Filipino statements in their original form, followed immediately by English translations in italics and parentheses. This approach was intended to preserve the emotional resonance and cultural nuance of participants’ narratives while also making them accessible to an international scholarly readership.
Interview recordings were transcribed verbatim and stored in encrypted files accessible only to the researchers. Identifiable details were removed from the transcripts, and participants’ names, organizations, and other sensitive references were replaced with codes or general descriptors. A transparent audit trail was maintained to document the stages of recruitment, data collection, transcription, and analysis.
Data were analyzed using Braun and Clarke’s (2006) thematic analysis, following an iterative and reflexive process. This involved repeated familiarization with the transcripts, systematic line-by-line coding, the clustering of codes into provisional categories, and the development and refinement of themes. Coding was conducted manually to closely engage with the multilingual data and to carefully attend to contextual nuance, affective expression, and meaning-making across English, Tagalog, and Bisaya narratives. Themes were reviewed for internal coherence and distinctiveness and refined through constant comparison across cases.
Representative excerpts were selected to illustrate each theme, with Tagalog and Bisaya statements preserved in their original form and immediately followed by italicized English translations. To enhance trustworthiness, selected extracts were returned to participants for factual verification. Reflexive memos were maintained throughout the analytic process to account for the researcher’s positionality and potential interpretive bias. Credibility and dependability were further supported through interview guide validation, triangulation of audio data with field notes, and the use of thick description to support analytic transparency and transferability.
Results
Summary of post-threat experiences of journalists in Mindanao.
Collateral vulnerability as the domestication of journalistic risk
Threats against journalists in Mindanao extend beyond the individual reporter and enter the intimate spaces of family and home, reshaping how journalism is practiced on a daily basis. Participants consistently described how fear redirected attention away from personal safety toward the protection of loved ones, prompting concrete adjustments to both professional routines and domestic arrangements. These changes illustrate how journalistic risk becomes domesticated—managed not only in the newsroom or the field, but within households and family relations.
Several journalists described relocating family members or altering living arrangements following threats. J1 shared: Your biggest concern here is what will happen to your family. It came to a point that I let them stay at my parents’ house because I am afraid for them.
This decision was not framed as temporary but as a necessary precaution that allowed him to continue working while reducing the visibility of his family.
Similarly, J4 explained that: Ang una mong priority ngayon is the safety of your family (Your first priority now is the safety of your family)
Indicating how journalistic work becomes secondary to ensuring that relatives are not exposed to retaliation linked to reporting activities.
For other participants, fear centered on the possibility that threats could reach their homes. J9 noted: Dili namo gusto nga tungod sa among trabaho, macompromise ang safety sa among pamilya. Unsaon nalang kung adtuon nila among balay? (We don’t want our profession to compromise the safety of our family. What if they come to our home?
This concern influenced decisions about when to be at home, who could visit, and how visible journalists were within their own communities. The home, once separate from professional risk, became incorporated into journalists’ safety calculations.
Despite these fears, none of the participants said they would leave journalism altogether. Instead, economic responsibility toward family members compelled them to continue reporting while managing risk more carefully. J10 explained: Stopping was never an option, if I quit, my family would have nothing to live on. So, I kept writing, even if every story felt like a gamble with my own safety.
This account illustrates how livelihood pressures intersect with family protection, shaping decisions about whether and how to pursue stories rather than whether to remain in the profession.
Across these accounts, collateral vulnerability manifests as a set of practical adjustments that allow journalists to sustain their work under threat. Decisions about where family members live, how visible journalists are in public spaces, and how risks are assessed before pursuing stories become embedded in everyday journalistic practice. Rather than operating solely as an individual occupational hazard, threat management becomes a shared concern negotiated within the family. Journalism, in this context, is practiced through a continuous balancing act between professional obligations and personal safety, with the household functioning as an extension of the risk environment in which reporting takes place.
Fear of the unknown as temporal discipline
Beyond the immediate receipt of threats, journalists described fear as persisting precisely because it lacked clear form, timing, or identifiable perpetrators. This uncertainty shaped how they approached their work daily, producing a constant sense of anticipation that influenced journalistic routines, decision-making, and mobility. Rather than responding to a single moment of danger, journalists learned to operate as though risk could surface at any time.
J2 articulated this condition by emphasizing the imbalance of knowledge between journalists and those issuing threats: Of course, this will make you scared. These people already knew you, but you did not have a single idea who they were in the first place. This would be a disadvantage and would affect you emotionally and psychologically.
The absence of identifiable actors made it difficult for journalists to determine when it was safe to resume normal routines. As a result, fear became deeply ingrained in everyday practice, shaping how journalists navigated spaces, interacted with others, and approached their work.
Several participants stressed that this fear was not extraordinary but deeply human. J12 noted: Kay mga tao lng mn pud mi, naa my feelings, maung natural ra nga mahadlok pud mi (Because we are still human, we have feelings; it is natural for us to be scared.)
This acknowledgment highlights how fear was normalized as part of journalistic life, rather than being treated as an exceptional response. Journalists continued working, but with heightened awareness that emotional vulnerability accompanied professional responsibility.
For some, fear intensified when threats referenced intimate knowledge of their routines. J6 recalled receiving messages that explicitly detailed his daily movements: It was very frightening when I received a threat for the first time. Especially when someone threatens you with phrases like these: ‘Do you still want to remain awake the next day? Kabalo mi sa imung everyday routine. Kabalo mi sa imung shifting time.’ (We knew your everyday routine. We also tracked your shift time.) This simply means that they have been following you.”
The realization that one’s schedule and movements were being monitored transformed ordinary work practices—such as reporting shifts, commuting, and appearing in public—into sources of anxiety. Activities essential to journalism became moments requiring heightened caution.
This persistent uncertainty influenced how journalists structured their time. Because threats did not specify when harm might occur, journalists felt unable to draw a boundary between danger and safety. Workdays were marked by constant alertness, and future assignments were assessed not only for editorial value but also for potential risk. Journalism, under these conditions, was practiced with an ongoing awareness that past threats could re-emerge without warning.
Fear of the unknown shaped journalism as a form of anticipatory practice. Journalists continued to report, but they worked under conditions where unpredictability had become routine. The lack of temporal closure meant that threat remained present in everyday decisions—when to travel, when to speak, when to appear on air, and when to remain cautious. In this way, fear was woven into the temporal organization of journalistic labor, quietly influencing how journalism was practiced long after the initial moment of intimidation.
Calculated survival as editorial self-governance
Following threats, journalists described making deliberate and continuous adjustments to their movements, speech, and news production. These changes were not temporary reactions but became part of their everyday journalistic routines. Participants consistently framed these adjustments as necessary for continuing work under conditions of perceived risk. Journalism practice, in this context, was reorganized around vigilance, planning, and restraint.
At the level of daily mobility, journalists altered their physical routines to reduce recognizability and traceability. J3 explained: …every time I go to the office I bring more than one clothe. So, I have two extra shirts sa akong bag. Ang akong sanina padulong is not the same sanina I will wear when I go back home, and then I do not go alone. (Every time I go to the office I bring more than one piece of clothing. The clothes I wear going to work are not the same clothes I wear when I go home, and I do not go alone.)
Similarly, J5 noted: Usahay mosakay ko’g motor, mag-ilis ko og sanina aron dili ko dali masubay. (Sometimes I ride a motorcycle and change clothes so that I would not be easily traced.)
These practices indicate how journalists incorporated concealment and unpredictability into their routines. Mobility, appearance, and companionship—normally peripheral to newswork—became integral considerations in carrying out journalistic tasks.
J1 described how threats reshaped not only movement but also social and spatial decision-making: This would highly affect your routine. It would also make your mind troubled. Your actions would be limited. You cannot just easily wander around and move from place to place. Who are the people that you’re going to socialize with? Who would be the owner of the said place? If I were to enter there, where would I exit? You should be safety-conscious in all situations.
Here, journalistic work extended beyond reporting to include constant situational assessment. Choices about where to go, whom to meet, and how long to stay in particular locations became part of the labor of journalism itself.
Calculated survival also shaped editorial decisions and on-air practices. J7 acknowledged making content adjustments following threats: I sometimes tone down the content of my stories.
Similarly, J6 explained how commentary formats changed over time: It has become challenging because commentary now requires careful organization. Whereas programs in the past could be more spontaneous, there is now a need to moderate what is being said.
These statements indicate a shift from spontaneous expression toward more carefully structured and moderated forms of reporting. Journalists described exercising greater caution in their language use, framing, and delivery, particularly in commentary-driven formats where statements are made in real-time.
Technological practices also became part of survival strategies. J3 recounted how broadcasting arrangements were modified: Naghimo mig mga adjustment… para lang makapadayon. Wala mi nagpaka hadlok og tungod lang niana… sa advance na technology karon pwede man ta maka programa bisan na wa ta sa radio station. Pwede man ta maka hook up pina-agi lang sa atoang cellphone. (We made adjustments just to continue. We did not let fear stop us. With today’s advanced technology, we can run programs even if we are not at the radio station. We can connect using our cellphones.)
Remote broadcasting and mobile connectivity enabled journalists to maintain their output while minimizing physical exposure. These adaptations altered where journalism was practiced and how presence was defined, shifting production away from fixed institutional spaces.
J3 further emphasized that risk management became embedded in program execution: The challenge lies in how you manage and run the program. The real test is in its execution, especially when operating outside your usual security. If you are careless, there is a strong chance you could be exposed or targeted.
Across accounts, journalists described journalism as a practice that now required constant foresight, moderation, and tactical decision-making. Reporting continued, but under conditions where safety considerations were interwoven with editorial judgment, mobility, and production processes. Calculated survival thus characterized how journalists governed their practices to remain active in the field while managing the perceived risks of their work.
Journalism as a fragile hustle
The accounts of the participants show that, after receiving threats, journalism is practiced under conditions of economic uncertainty that require continuous improvisation. Rather than being sustained through stable institutional support, journalistic work becomes dependent on a combination of personal networks, informal funding arrangements, and multiple income sources. Threats do not stop journalists from working; instead, they alter how reporting is financed, organized, and sustained on a day-to-day basis.
Several journalists described relying on advocacy networks and personal allies to continue their work. J8 explained: I used people who have the same advocacy as I have. Uhhhmm good governance so they help me fund my food, fund my expenses sa mga lakaw sa mag motor, mga sakayanan. (I used people who have the same advocacy as I have and good governance, so they help me fund my food and fund my travel expenses.)
This account illustrates how journalistic practice becomes intertwined with relationship-building beyond the newsroom. Reporting is no longer supported solely by salaries or organizational budgets, but by informal arrangements that help cover transportation, meals, and fieldwork costs. In this context, producing news requires not only reporting skills but also the ability to mobilize and maintain supportive networks.
The financial demands of reporting were further emphasized by J11, who noted: The challenge here now is the sustainability of writing stories because it is expensive to produce positive stories. You have to pay people. You have to go places. You have to get accommodation.
This statement highlights how threats intensify the cost of routine journalistic activities. Travel, lodging, and coordination with sources become increasingly burdensome when safety concerns necessitate additional planning or the avoidance of certain areas. As a result, everyday reporting practices involve constant calculations about affordability alongside editorial considerations.
For some participants, economic responsibility extended beyond their own survival to the people they worked with. J7 shared: They help me sustain pud the salary of my videographers and editors and the youtube income I used it. (They also helped me sustain the salary of my videographers and editors, and I used the YouTube income.)
This illustrates how journalism practice becomes collective and interdependent in the face of threats. Journalists are not only managing their own risks and resources but also ensuring the continuity of work for collaborators whose livelihoods depend on ongoing production. Generating content, securing modest revenue from digital platforms, and distributing income among team members become integral parts of journalistic labor.
Journalism in these accounts emerges as a fragile hustle—an ongoing effort to piece together resources in order to keep reporting possible. Threats not only shape what journalists report or how cautiously they work, but they also influence how journalism is funded, sustained, and organized. Practice shifts toward constant economic negotiation, with reporting maintained through personal initiative, networked support, and the adaptive use of available platforms. In this setting, journalism continues, but as a form of labor that must be continually reassembled in response to both financial strain and security concerns.
Discussion
Reframing threat beyond the moment of intimidation
This study argues that threats against journalists should be understood not as episodic acts, but as processes that initiate enduring transformations in journalistic practice. Existing scholarship shows that exposure to violence, harassment, and intimidation produces lasting psychological and professional consequences, shaping journalists’ emotional well-being, risk perception, and editorial decision-making (Feinstein et al., 2025; Hasan and Al-Zaman, 2026; Høiby, 2020; Urbániková et al., 2025). These findings establish that threat fundamentally alters how journalists experience and perform their work. However, much of this literature continues to conceptualize threat as an episodic event whose effects persist primarily at the level of individual perception, emotional response, or adaptive behavior. While this perspective is essential, it risks overlooking how threat operates not merely as an experienced condition, but as a structuring force that reorganizes journalism itself—reshaping its material routines, spatial movements, and economic possibilities.
The findings from Mindanao complicate this event-centered framing. Journalists did not describe the threat as something that occurred and then subsided into memory or emotional residue. Instead, the threat became embedded within the ongoing conditions under which journalism was practiced. Decisions about mobility, editorial tone, technological use, and economic sustainability were continuously shaped by the anticipation of harm. Threat did not simply produce lingering fear; it restructured everyday journalistic routines and survival strategies. In this sense, threat functioned not merely as a past event with enduring psychological effects, but as an ongoing structuring condition that reshaped journalism over time.
Conceptualizing this condition as post-threat journalism shifts the analytic focus from threat as an episodic disruption to threat as an enduring governing force. The “post” in post-threat does not denote a temporal period in which threat has ended, but a structural reorientation in which threat becomes ambient—persistently shaping professional judgment, spatial mobility, and economic survival. These reframing challenges dominant paradigms such as the chilling effect, which emphasize withdrawal, silence, or deterrence (Schauer, 1978). While chilling effect models assume that the threat suppresses journalistic activity (Rožukalne et al., 2025; Schauer, 1978), the Mindanao cases demonstrate a more complex dynamic. Journalists did not necessarily stop reporting; instead, they reorganized their practices to remain active amid anticipated danger. Journalism persisted, but in an altered form—governed by anticipatory self-protection, constrained autonomy, and individualized risk management.
By reframing threat as a structuring condition rather than a discrete event, this study advances the literature beyond psychological and perceptual models of risk. It demonstrates that the significance of threat lies not only in its immediate impact or emotional consequences, but in its capacity to reorganize journalism as labor, practice, and lived experience.
Post-threat journalism as normalized adaptation and individualization of risk
The findings also demonstrate that post-threat journalism operates through normalization rather than exception. Journalists incorporated threat into their routine professional behavior, treating vigilance, spatial concealment, and editorial moderation as necessary conditions of continued work. This aligns with Bélair-Gagnon et al.’s (2024) argument that attacks on journalists are increasingly experienced as “occupational hazards” rather than isolated incidents. Their framework is important because it highlights how threats become routinized within journalistic labor. However, the Mindanao cases reveal that normalization has deeper structural implications than previously articulated.
While Bélair-Gagnon et al. (2024) demonstrate that journalists come to expect and manage occupational risk, the findings here show that normalization does not merely reshape professional expectations—it redistributes responsibility for safety away from institutions and onto individual journalists. Journalists developed survival strategies not because comprehensive institutional protections existed, but because they did not. Adjustments such as altering travel routes, moderating editorial tone, relocating family members, and relying on informal economic networks emerged as individualized responses to structural vulnerability. Risk management became privatized, absorbed into journalists’ bodies, households, and personal relationships rather than addressed through systemic protection.
This individualization of risk reflects broader transformations in contemporary journalism as a precarious form of labor. As Deuze and Witschge (2020) argue, journalism increasingly operates under conditions where insecurity becomes normalized as part of professional identity. The Mindanao findings extend this insight by demonstrating how threat accelerates this process, transforming journalism into a survival-oriented practice structured by anticipatory self-protection. The normalization of threat thus obscures institutional accountability (UNESCO, 2022b). What appears to be professional resilience may instead reflect structural abandonment, in which journalists are compelled to absorb risks that institutions and states have failed to mitigate (Bélair-Gagnon et al., 2024; Slavtcheva-Petkova et al., 2023; Scott et al., 2019).
These adaptations also function as indirect forms of censorship. As Díaz-Cerveró and Ibanez (2020) argue, repression can operate through internalization rather than direct coercion. Journalists continued reporting, but under conditions of anticipatory restraint shaped by perceived vulnerability. Editorial moderation, spatial concealment, and technological adaptation were not simply professional choices, but survival strategies. In this sense, post-threat journalism extends Bélair-Gagnon et al.’s (2024) occupational hazard framework by demonstrating that normalization does not merely make threat routine—it restructures journalism itself, transforming it into a precarious mode of labor governed by individualized risk management.
Post-threat journalism and the structural erosion of press freedom
Conceptualizing these dynamics as post-threat journalism also reframes how press freedom is understood and evaluated. Conventional approaches measure press freedom through visible indicators such as killings, arrests, or formal censorship (UNESCO, 2022b). While these metrics remain essential, they fail to capture how threat reshapes journalism indirectly through everyday adaptation and anticipatory restraint. The findings demonstrate that press freedom can erode not only through spectacular acts of violence but through the routinization of vulnerability and the normalization of individualized survival strategies.
This perspective aligns with scholarship on democratic backsliding and structural repression, which shows that contemporary forms of control often operate through indirect mechanisms rather than overt prohibition (Lee and Chan, 2023; Neilson and Ortiga, 2023). In the Philippine context, impunity, economic precarity, and political hostility create conditions in which journalists must continuously manage their own vulnerability (Arao, 2024). Threat functions as a governance mechanism that shapes journalistic practice without requiring continuous direct enforcement. Journalists internalize risk management, moderating their mobility, speech, and professional visibility in anticipation of harm (Bélair-Gagnon et al., 2024; Slavtcheva-Petkova et al., 2023; Waisbord, 2020).
Post-threat journalism thus reveals a form of structural press freedom erosion that operates through the redistribution of responsibility. Rather than relying solely on overt repression, the burden of ensuring safety falls on journalists themselves. This transformation allows institutions and states to maintain formal commitments to press freedom while journalists continue working under conditions of normalized vulnerability. Press freedom persists in principle, but is materially constrained in practice.
This study, therefore, advances existing scholarship by demonstrating that threat does not simply normalize risk—it reorganizes journalism as a precarious system of survival. Post-threat journalism captures this transformation, showing how journalism continues under conditions in which threat becomes embedded in everyday professional life. In this context, resilience should not be interpreted solely as professional strength, but also as evidence of structural conditions in which journalists must absorb risks that institutions and democratic systems have failed to address.
Limitations of the study
The study’s findings should be interpreted within the boundaries of its qualitative design and contextual scope. Based on in-depth interviews with Mindanao-based journalists who had experienced threats, the analysis relies on self-narrated accounts shaped by memory, emotion, and the constraints of fear. Participants may have omitted, softened, or reframed experiences to protect themselves, preserve professional credibility, or avoid retraumatization. These silences are analytically significant, revealing how intimidation governs not only journalistic practice but also what can be safely spoken.
The study is situated within the specific media ecology of Mindanao, where political intimidation, patronage networks, and economic precarity intersect. While this context offers critical insight into journalism under sustained threat in peripheral regions, the findings cannot be assumed to represent metropolitan, national, or digital-first news environments. Rather than offering statistical generalization, the study provides a situated account of provincial journalism shaped by structural vulnerability.
The absence of institutional perspectives, including those of editors, newsroom managers, and policy actors, limits the ability to assess how organizational structures may reproduce or mitigate post-threat conditions. Future research incorporating these institutional dimensions could clarify how threats become normalized or contested within newsroom systems. Further, the researchers’ regional proximity enhanced contextual sensitivity but may also have shaped interpretive emphasis. The findings should therefore be understood as reflexively grounded interpretations that illuminate how journalism adapts to threat within a specific socio-political and affective environment, rather than as universal claims.
Implications for journalism practice
Understanding journalism through the lens of post-threat journalism requires rethinking how safety, ethics, and sustainability are conceptualized. Existing frameworks often treat threats as episodic incidents addressed through emergency hotlines, temporary relocation, or short-term legal aid (CPJ, 2023; UNESCO, 2022b). While essential, these responses obscure how intimidation persists as an enduring condition that reshapes personal life, professional judgment, and newsroom economies. In Mindanao, collateral vulnerability, anticipatory fear, tactical restraint, and fragile hustling show that surviving a threat does not restore normalcy but inaugurates a precarious mode of journalistic practice.
This perspective reveals that press freedom protections must extend beyond individual journalists to the intimate and economic networks through which intimidation operates. Families become unwilling participants in risk, while journalists internalize hypervigilance as a routine condition of work. Treating these consequences as private burdens obscures their structural origins. Institutionalizing psychosocial care, digital security training, and sustained legal and financial support within news organizations is therefore essential to normalizing safety as a collective responsibility rather than an individual coping strategy.
Post-threat journalism also exposes how censorship increasingly operates through coerced adaptation rather than direct prohibition. When journalists narrow their reporting, moderate their tone, or avoid sensitive beats, freedom is curtailed not through overt repression but through everyday risk management. This hidden censorship is intensified by economic precarity, particularly in Global South contexts where underfunding forces journalists to rely on unstable networks of support (Díaz-Cerveró and Ibanez, 2020). Without structural protections that address psychological, material, and financial vulnerability, resilience risks being misrecognized as professional strength rather than evidence of systemic neglect.
The afterlife of threat cannot be addressed through episodic interventions or appeals to individual resilience. It demands systemic change: integrating safety and psychosocial care into newsroom infrastructures, preparing journalists for hostile environments, and strengthening institutional and state mechanisms that sustain press freedom over time. The challenge is not only to protect journalists from threats, but to dismantle the enduring conditions that force journalism itself to operate within their aftermath.
Conclusion
This study demonstrates that threats against journalists do not end with the moment of intimidation but persist as enduring conditions that reorganize journalism as practice, labor, and lived experience. By introducing the concept of post-threat journalism, this research shows that intimidation functions not merely as an episodic disruption but as an ambient structuring force that reshapes professional judgment, mobility, economic survival, and relational life. This finding reinforces emerging scholarship that conceptualizes journalist safety as an ongoing condition shaped by the anticipation of harm rather than simply the absence of violence (Slavtcheva-Petkova et al., 2023).
The study also extends existing frameworks by demonstrating that the normalization of threat redistributes responsibility for safety onto individual journalists, compelling them to absorb risks through anticipatory restraint, economic improvisation, and individualized survival strategies. In this context, journalism persists, but in a structurally altered form shaped by vulnerability rather than institutional protection. These dynamics reveal that press freedom can erode not only through visible repression but through the routinization of risk that quietly constrains journalistic autonomy.
Ultimately, post-threat journalism highlights a critical democratic paradox: journalism continues under threat, but its conditions of possibility are fundamentally transformed. Recognizing threat as a structuring condition rather than an isolated event is essential for understanding contemporary press freedom and for developing institutional responses that address not only acts of violence but the enduring environments that make journalism a practice of survival rather than security.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data Availability Statement
The data cannot be shared openly to protect the privacy of participants.